David Krugler

Growing up in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, David Krugler dreamed of attending the U.S. Naval Academy, but he left his home state to attend Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, to study English and history. After earning a M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he moved back to Wisconsin in 1997 to teach at the University of Wisconsin—Platteville, where he’s now Professor of History. Extended research trips to Washington, D.C., kindled his interest in the history of the city, inspiring both his works of nonfiction and fiction. He has published books on several different topics: Cold War propaganda, nuclear warfare, and racial conflict in the United States. Krugler is the author of The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battles, 1945-1953 (University of Missouri Press, 2000), This Is Only a Test: How Washington, D.C., Prepared for Nuclear War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back (Cambridge University Press, 2014). The Dead Don’t Bleed (Pegasus Crime, 2016), a World War II spy thriller set in Washington, is his first novel. The sequel, Rip the Angels from Heaven, is available July 3, 2018. Krugler has served as a faculty leader for teacher education programs at the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Master of American History and Government program at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. He is the past recipient of research grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Organization of American Historians, and the White House Historical Association. In Spring 2011, he was a fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. In 2010, he appeared in the National Geographic Channel documentary American Doomsday. He has written for TheDailyBeast.com and been interviewed by Slate.com, the San Francisco Weekly, BBC Mundo, and CJOB Talk Radio, Winnipeg, Canada (see press page for details). When he's not teaching and writing, Krugler enjoys overseas travel (most recent trip: Mexico City), going to art museums, and reading mysteries.